Gangsters have guns and muscle, but a good writer always gets the last word. Roberto Saviano is a marked man. After writing Gomorrah and publicly denouncing the bosses of the Camorra, the organized crime network that dominates the Italian city of Naples and the surrounding region of Campania, Saviano began receiving death threats. When he turned up recently at the trial of a Camorra member, the accused shouted at Saviano to pass on his best wishes to Don Peppino, a priest who had been murdered. Saviano now lives in an undisclosed location, under constant police guard, after Umberto Eco warned on public television that he would be murdered like the anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino if the state didn’t step in. Saviano’s transgression in writing this savage and extraordinary book wasn’t simply to identify the Camorra’s bosses and their enablers. It was to break an unstated compact, a web of complicity that entangles politicians, businessmen, Mafiosi, judges and journalists and enriches many who participate. This unstated agreement has survived the corruption scandals of the 1990s, which centered on bribes paid to Italian politicians and destroyed the major political parties of Italy. It insinuates itself throughout Italian politics and business, not so much an active conspiracy as a tacit consensus that you shouldn’t rock the boat by pointing at others’ indiscretions and shady relationships. After all, someone else might in turn point their finger at you. And if you’re honest: well, nobody’s entirely honest, and even those who are can be smeared.